Saturday, February 9, 2008

Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in California, got the idea for his innovative "Windbelt" technology while thinking about the way wind and vibrations caused the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. (See YouTube video at the end of this post.)

While working in Haiti, Shawn saw the need first-hand for an inexpensive way to generate electricity. Unfortunately, wind turbines were not very efficient when scaled down, had inherent safety issues for anything that got caught in the spinning blades, and all the copper wire required to create most types of turbines was expensive.